 Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2018. Brought to you by Informatica. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE live here in Las Vegas at the Venetian. This is Informatica World's exclusive coverage with theCUBE Informatica World 2018. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Jim Kobiel's analyst at Wikibon. Still going to hang on theCUBE. Our next guest is Tracy Ring. Vice President at Deloitte Consultant. Great to see you again. You as well. So, love having you on. Last year we go through all the interviews and it always comes up. And this is important. We know we are passionate about women in tech and inclusion and diversity. Huge topic. The job's never done. In fact, I was in New York last week for a blockchain event and I wore a shirt that said, Satoshi is female. And I literally was getting so many high fives. But it's not just women in tech that has a role in men play. This is an ongoing conversation. So, what's the state of the industry from your perspective? How do you see it? Obviously the data world is indiscriminate. Data's data. Absolutely. It should be 50-50. Yeah. I think that the opportunity is multifaceted, right? So we're in a place where technology is changing unbelievably fast. We're graduating nearly as many men as women in fields of science, data, analytics, computer engineering, et cetera. But we're not seeing a combination of women in leadership roles as much as we would expect. We're not seeing the retention of women in those roles. And for me, I'm really, really passionate about the fact that supporting, attracting, and keeping women in those roles is really critical, right? There's an interesting facet to how this all really, really plays together. Deloitte for 20 years has a women initiative, right? 20 years of supporting women, embracing them, helping them support leadership roles. And I think that the time is now, if not, it's a long overdue to really support them within this field. I also think that women in data, an initiative that we're launching this year and having our launch event today, is sort of super timely because women in data is not women who will only become CIOs or will only become CDOs. These are women that will be the chief marketing officers, the CHROs, and using data to tell their stories. You know, we've had a guest on earlier who was a man, but he was head of the CDO for the Ireland Bank. And, you know, Peter Burris asked me a question and said, hey, you know, where did you come from? Technical? You know, he came from the business side. Who knows technology? This is what you're getting at. And I think it's something that we've been seeing as a pattern that you don't have to rise up to the ranks to be super nerdy. Although that's cool too, when there's a lot more stem action. But there's also multiple vectors into the field. You can come from business and no tech and a lot more tech is consumable and learnable either online or through some sort of other proficiency. So this is a big story. And so how are you guys looking at that at Deloitte? I know you Deloitte's got the track record, but it's all, it scales beyond Deloitte, right? It's an industry thing. How are you guys seeing this? How are you looking at helping people either connect the dots or support each other? What's some of the latest and greatest? Yeah, I mean, I think Informatica is part of what has created the case for change, right? We've democratized data integration. We have made self-service analytics. We've put data in the cloud in everyone's hands, right? So technology's out there and more every single day. And I think the unique part is, is that when we think about diversity holistically and I think of diversity from ages and geographic and gender, et cetera. I think really being able to take all of that diverse experience and be able to listen to business users' requirements in a way that they can hear it and listen for something different, right? And bring skills to bear that aren't necessarily there. I think if we can build better technology that's more future-proofed based on having a diverse crowd listening and trying to build something that's far more compelling than, you know, I asked for X, build me X. I think when we really do our clients and in the world of justice is when we, you know, someone asks for X and you ask them 10 more questions and have you, what about this? And what, and what, and what? And I think really being much more inquisitive, giving people the ability to be inquisitive and bringing more opinions to the table to be inquisitive. And bringing more diversity, Brex, makes the applications better, so that's clear. We see that in some of the conversations we had, but I got to ask you about the question of roles. What do you see, kind of, you look at the trends. Are there certain roles that are being adopted with women in tech more than others, less trending down, up? What are some of the trend lines on either roles in tech for women? Yeah, you know, I think that overall, when I had the opportunity, so when we decided we're going to launch a program with Informatica, we want the women who are going to be the chief data officers of tomorrow. And it was a great question, because actually what we ended up saying is the chief data officers of tomorrow could be so many different current roles right now, right? And how do we really kind of attract the right women into this cohort, support them for a long year and provide them the form to network, connect with others, understand different career paths, looking at what we're seeing with GDPR and regulations and all these other things happening. The concepts and roles that didn't even exist years ago, so data governance leads and chief analytic officers. Or chief AI officers. How do we break women into the hottest fields like AI, deep learning? If you look at the research literature out of both the commercial and the academic world, many of the authors of the papers are men. I mean, more than the standard ratio of men to women in the corporate space, near as I can tell from my deep reading, how do you break women into AI, for example, when they haven't been part of that overall research community? That's just, it's almost like a rhetorical question. Yeah, yeah, how do you not? That's, you know, it's just impossible to not bring them to bear it. I mean, the skills, the talent, the ingenuity, I think it's absolutely mandatory. And someone said to me, they said, well, why are the men not invited to this event? Why are they not in the cohort? And I said, you know, because there's a component of all this that we want to grow and foster and support and create opportunities. You know, one of the women that sat on our board today said, you know, I'm not somebody who's gonna golf. I'm not someone who's gonna go to a sports game. I'm gonna meet you in the boardroom and we're gonna talk about compelling topics there. And so I think it's about encouraging and fostering a new way of networking that's more aligned with what women are interested in and what, you know, sometimes we do best. And I think creating an opportunity for a different type of everything in the way that we operate is important. I think self-awareness for men and this also creating a good vibe, right? Having a good vibe is critical in my opinion. And also, you know, not judging people, right? You know, based upon, you know, some women say, hey, I like to get dressed up and that's what I am. And some people who don't want to go to sports and some guys want this. So I think generally there needs to be kind of a reset. Like, hey, let's just have an open mind and a good vibe. It's like lunch and learns. You know, lunch and learns are a great enabler for centers of competence to get together on a regular basis to talk about business and technical related things. But also it's a social environment. How can you build more of those kinds of opportunities into the corporate culture where they're not skewing the actual socializing to traditionally male-dominated hobbies or interests? Or traditionally female-dominated hobbies or interests? How can you have sort of a balance of those kinds of socialization opportunities in a professionally appropriate environment that also involve a fair amount of shop talk? Because that's what gets people bonding and promoted in their careers is that they do a deep shop talk in the appropriate settings. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the women that I personally consider a mentor, if it wasn't for data, I wouldn't be where I am today. And she said, you know, I grew up in an industry where unfortunately, you know, I really didn't have a voice at the table. And my voice at the table came from data. It came from my ability to see connections, patterns and detect things. And also from my ability to create networks of people and make connections and pull things together in a way that my colleagues weren't doing. And, you know, when she tells that story, I think that's the template, right? That's the empowerment. We want to say, use everything at your bevy to bring the best value to your business end users. And she's connecting the dots in a way that no one else had. And is using data as really the impetus to really solidify everything that she's saying. It's inarguable. That's a great story. It's just amazing. Well, she had a power. She really drove that hard. It was awesome. Well, let's take that to the next level. So, you know, I have a daughter as a junior at UCAL Berkeley and she's a STEM girl. And so she's got a good vibe in there. It's the STEM girl. I like the STEM girl too. You know, but no, but she turned away from computer science because, you know, in middle school, the vibe wasn't there. Yeah. And it was kind of a social things. You mentioned social. Your advice to young women now because we're seeing people with the democratization. You see YouTube. You see all these tools. You got robots. You got maker fairs. You got data. You're seeing a lot more touch points where people can, you know, ingratiate in, unthreatened, you know, just getting immersed in tech. So you're starting to get peoples to taste and not being tracked into it. Absolutely. So what's the advice for young folks trying to navigate? And is it networking groups? Is it mentoring? What's the playbook in your mind? Yeah, I think it's a combination of everything that you've mentioned, right? I absolutely think that your network and what one of my mentors calls your sleeper network, right? The network that's out there, the people that I worked with five years ago and we worked and we're in a war room till 2 a.m. and you know, then I just got busy, right? And reactivating your sleeper networks, you know, having the courage to kind of keep people apprised using social media in a way that people, you know, the number of people that say, oh, I didn't know you're up to the set or the other thing, goodness, you posted. And so I think using all of the technology to your advantage, and I also think there's a component of someone, I mean, I had an MIS degree for undergrad and I started out as a developer. You might have explained what that is for the younger generation. Oh, I know. How crazy is that? Oh my gosh. Was that in the DP department? Can you imagine? But I wasn't interested in technology that much. It was what was going to get me a job and I thought I would become a business analyst. I've stayed with it and now I'm really passionate about tech, but I think there's a component of all this that every job, you know, the CHROs, the CAOs, all of the roles that roll up, every finance person I know that's exceptional is phenomenal with data, right? And so I think not only creating a network of people that are in the industry, but I think it's about telling the stories outside the industry and telling the, oh my gosh, you'll never believe what we learned today. And I think that's the magic of the stories and being transparent. Well, Tracy, you're an inspiration. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really love the story. I got to ask, what are you up to now? Tell us what's up with you. Obviously, you've moved on from MIS Management Information Systems, part of the DP data processing department. That's many computer days. Oh my God, we're going, we're going to throw back there. Absolutely. What are you up to now? What are you having fun with? Yeah, so my day job, I have the luxury of working across our cognitive, analytic and RPA alliances, which is an insane mouthful, but means I get to work with some of our most exciting alliance partners that Deloitte is building solutions and going to market and getting really great customer stories under our belt. And I think really kind of blowing the doors off of what we did three years ago, five years ago and 20 years ago when MIS degrees were still being handed out. So, you know that. A lot more exciting now, isn't it? It's way better now. So. I wish I was 23 again. Yeah, come back in time. Yeah, so really holistically seeing what we consider ecosystems and alliances is that's my day job. Tracy Ring, Vice President Deloitte. Great story, fun to have on the queue. Also, doing some great work. Super exciting time. You got cloud, you got data. It really is probably one of the most creative times in the tech industry. Super, super fun to get involved. This is theCUBE here out in the open at Informatical World in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, Jim Colby. Let's be back with more. Stay with us from Vegas. We'll be right back. Thank you.